Meet the team leading Tower day-to-day
Paul Johnston
Interim Chief Executive Officer
With 25 years' experience across multiple industries, particularly in the insurance and financial services sectors, Paul has extensive international, strategic, and operational finance expertise. He most recently held the position of Tower's Chief Financial Officer.
Before joining Tower, Paul was based in Tokyo as the Chief Financial Officer and Far East Region Director for Chubb, one of the world's largest publicly traded property and casualty insurance companies. Prior to this, Paul spent almost 16 years in the UK with Chubb, AIG, Nomura Investment Bank and Deloitte.
Paul has a proven international track record in executive leadership and increasing profitability across consumer-focused companies.
Angus Shelton
Interim Chief Financial Officer
Angus has more than 25 years' experience in financial services in New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
He has an extensive track record in strategic financial transformation and analysis.
Most recently, Angus was Tower's Deputy CFO, having joined the business as Head of Financial Reporting and Analysis in 2017.
Prior to that he has served in financial leadership roles in New Zealand and the UK for the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, ANZ and Barclays Capital.
Sharyn Reichstein
Chief Risk Officer
Sharyn joined Tower in July 2023. She is an experienced executive who brings a wealth of knowledge in enterprise risk management, corporate governance, financial regulation, financial risk, and risk management to Tower.
Prior to taking up the Chief Risk Officer role, Sharyn held the position of General Manager, General Insurance, for the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), where she was responsible for the regulation and supervision of the general insurance industry in Australia. She was also the Chair of APRA's General Insurance Industry Group, scanning the risk environment and setting strategic responses to industry issues.
With extensive experience in supervision of the financial sector, spanning banking, insurance, and superannuation, Sharyn is highly skilled in stress testing, policy development, supervision frameworks, and corporate strategy.
Michelle Finch
Chief Customer and Marketing Officer
Michelle has a strong background in financial services comprising marketing, product, digital, and growth roles over 23 years, in both New Zealand and South Africa. Michelle joined Tower in 2021, prior to her appointment as Chief Customer and Marketing Officer, she led Tower's marketing and customer experience design initiatives, which have cemented Tower as a progressive and customer focused brand.
Before Tower, Michelle led Westpac NZ's consumer segment's tribe, an agile business unit (100+ team members) focused on creating and delivering end to end customer solutions. Prior to that, Michelle held a number of senior product and marketing leadership positions with Westpac, IAG, and First National Bank South Africa.
Andrew Hambleton
Chief Administrative Officer
Andrew has more than 20 years' HR and financial services experience, both in New Zealand and globally. Prior to joining Tower, Andrew held a number of senior HR and business roles with Blackrock in New York and Hong Kong.
As Chief Operating Officer of Blackrock Asia Pacific, he provided executive leadership across all operations, technology, major projects, business continuity, and transformation. Previously he held a number of global and regional human resource executive leadership roles leading a global HR transformation and played a key role in helping to embed and develop Blackrock's talent, culture, and values, with a strong focus on diversity and inclusion.
Prior to this, Andrew held a number of senior HR leadership roles for ANZ in Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.
Steve Wilson
Chief Claims Officer
Steve brings more than 20 years’ of insurance experience to Tower, specifically in large operations throughout Australia and Asia. He joins Tower after five years at QBE Insurance, where he served as the Regional Head of Claims for Asia, across Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines, and the Pacific Islands.
Prior to working at QBE, Steve worked for IAG for over 17 years, in both the Australian and Asian markets.
Ron Mudaliar
Chief Underwriting Officer
Ron joined Tower as Head of Underwriting in October 2016 with more than 30 years' experience in the insurance industry in New Zealand, London and India. Ron's previous roles include executive management of large operational teams (150+), risk and compliance overview of operational and sales teams, NZ Integration Lead for merger of two large Australian general insurers and managing large portfolios of intermediated and partner businesses.
Ron has led business ownership of large transformation programmes predominantly for migration of legacy business to new products and platforms.
Liz Cawson
Interim Chief Data and Technology Officer
Liz has extensive experience across the digital, data and insurance industries in medium and large enterprises in the UK and New Zealand, with a career spanning over 25 years.
She joined Tower in 2018 and before her appointment as Interim Chief Data and Technology Officer, led Tower's IT operations and business engagement division.
Prior to this, Liz held service management and consulting positions at AMP NZ, One New Zealand and Infosys. She brings a wealth of operational and technical expertise to Tower, specialising in implementing customer-centric strategies and staff experiences to drive organisations success.